They like their position but would not say never to looking at acquisition offers.

Charter assets are complete and well positioned. They have fire power if opportunities come up.

Broadband and bundle offers are tough to compete with.

Merger with Comcast is probably more feasible than in the past today but not probable.

Wireless is a tough business with a difficult competitive position. The Verizon MVNO is good.

5G is an opportunity for Spectrum.

There is attrition in cable bundle but the market is still huge: 94 million.

There is still must see content, such as sports.

Altice has strong margins (margin maximization). Charter is watching. If Altice can maintain the high margins it may lead to either other cable companies getting better or Altice acquiring them. If not they (Altice) will be acquired. This will probably play out over the next couple years.

Formula 1: great international sports franchise; 400 million+ TV audience; many parts of the business are under-exploited such as sponsorships.

Chase Carey is a great manager who has brought on some top-tier talent to round out the management team.

Race calendar is locked in for 2017 and probably 2018. Sponsorship has the most potential for near-term improvements.

The races need to be more interesting. This will take some time.

They think the opportunity is bigger than they first thought.

Teams have an interest in a more balanced league will make the product more compelling.

Best TV deal is in the U.K. There is a lot of potential to improve the TV deal in the U.S.

Liberty Sirius XM.

Pandora is way under monetized. The subscription streaming business does not have very good economics. The free radio market is still a $16 billion market. Perhaps Pandora could help Sirius to go after some of that money.

Future of connected car. In some ways, this will threaten Sirius because there will be more options in the car. But the two-way connectivity can help Sirius provide a better service.

The Agero platform has signed up a number of car manufacturers.

Liberty Broadband.

Lots of M&A discussion. The current administration is positive for more consolidation. There are not many cable targets left. Charter is very bullish on future prospects. They have a great management team and the comp structure is well aligned.

Charter is confident on the mobile offering. There is upside here.

QVC

Has grown for the past 30 years. Only a couple periods of no-growth. There were distractions around the election which persist. There are some green shoots. Some positive trends.

Liberty Broadband sells at discount. That will go away when Broadband is merged into Charter or Charter is sold. They have borrowing capacity to take advantage of the discount to juice the returns.

Howard is locked up for quite awhile. No other content provider stands out as a big threat.

Important stat is penetration rate in new cars; this is now in the 70-75% range.

this builds a double acquisition chance: new and then used

have invested heavily to monetize used car channel

the conversion rate on used cars is not as high as on new. it is not just about income levels.

the used market may be a little more sensitive to price.

it is critical to get the trial started early – this matters.

they try various offers to see what will move the needle. they also test their cadence. this has become more sophisticated.

1/3 of used cars are sold by new dealers; 1/3 by independents; 1/3 are private transactions. they are nailing it in the first group.

they are now moving into the channel where you go to get your vehicle serviced. they also continue to work with insurance and finance companies. this is harder given privacy issues.

the car industry changes slowly. they are coming out with the 360L product. Meyer does not care how people get the product, i.e. via sat, IP, etc. they are not wedded to satellites.

it is not just compelling content. it must also be easy to use. 360L is a very easy to use interface. you should not care how you’re getting the signal. 360L is two-way which allows Sirius to enhance the offering. also, it will make it easy for customers to renew and get information.

there are 40 vehicles on the road running tests. they have learned a lot and they are excited about its prospects.

360L should make content discovery easier.

they are deep in discussions with all OEMs on the rollout of 360L. The first car should be on the road Q1, 2018.

they should have been more aggressive in their IP offering. they now have hundreds of people working on it. They have a highly rated app that works well. they fixed a lot of stuff and it can now roll out on any device. This should expand. It is all about getting the service more easily outside the vehicle.

in-home engagement drives down churn.

they do not need an acquisition to do IP. Radio is a $25 billion business. Sirius comprises 25%. A lot of the balance is free radio. Should Sirius pursue that space? They are looking at it but have not found anything. Some of the business models look weak.

They are guiding 1.3 million net ads this year. They beat guidance last year because of churn performance. this may be the best indicator of customer satisfaction.

the year started well. the economy is good. they watch home starts because it correlates to the truck market. they are looking for 17 million new cars. this would be great.

they think churn rates should be steady but it is early in the year.

churn performance last year was better a result of a lot of blocking and tackling. the marketing organization is expanded. the elasticity of product was strong last year as they worked through a price increase. They worry when they raise prices. they do not assume they can keep raising prices but were pleased to rate hike in 2016.

they are in 100% of luxury cars. car companies do not want Sirius in all standard models. Penetration in this segment will probably not change much.

they are spending more time on packaging. they are not in the ARPU business; they are in the cash flow business. they are testing a lot of things to improve this. they do not see ARPU going down. number one reason for churn is customers who do not want to pay.

there will probably need tailored offerings to reach lower income households. this needs to be done without cannibalization.

car business changes slowly. they just signed off on the 2022 year model for connected vehicles. After 2020 most vehicle makers will have an embedded modem to own the relationship with the customer and get more data to do that.

360L should future proof their product to be competitive with new connectivity offerings.

They are looking hard at opportunities in the connected vehicle space.

There will be more Agero rollouts in 2017.

Satisfaction levels with Sirius content are strong. People pay for great content. They must evolve as the population ages. Biggest opportunity in next 3-5 years is Generation Y. Millenials don’t pay. They look at many content opportunities. Howard is somewhat unique. They would love to find another.

Most of the big content renewal deals are done.

Music labels don’t think Sirius pays enough; they think they pay too much. this will be settled by the Copyright Royalty Board. Meyer is optimistic that they can reach a reasonable rate.

The popularity of country channels is off the chart. the labels need Sirius to create country stars. relationship with content providers is strong.

Leverage target is 4X. they are below that. this is still the target, they have lots of firepower. they returned $500 million in Q4 2016. they have repurchased $8 billion of stock; this has been expanded by the board to $10 billion. they are funding the growth opportunities. they are looking at acquisitions but they will not be distracted.

They initiated the dividend to reach a class of investors who only buy stocks that pay a dividend. They are reviewing if this is the case. They like their capital allocation strategy.

Vast majority of capital will go towards buybacks.

Meyer has met with Ted Weschler 3 or 4 weeks ago and other times in the past. They are thrilled to have Berkshire Hathaway as an investor.

Sirius’s royalties are not related to streaming royalty rates. it is a different dynamic.

Topline drivers: New builds such as Project Lightning in UK, B2B growth, expanding mobile business

They are working to accelerate growth to 7-8%

Goal is to keep costs as flat as possible over next two years

Project Lightning is on track with regards to penetration and ARPU

Looking for 30% unlevered returns on new builds

Targeting 40% penetration after 3 years in new builds

Quad play: still early days but ahead of U.S.; fueled by an incumbent in every market. Liberty has mobile launched in every market; the economic benefit is churn reduction. Each market is treated differently.

Preference is a full MVNO that maximizes control over customer relationship. They want to own the SIM card.

They have invested in making the WiFi experience in the home very good. This is very important to the customer.

5G will take a while to be market ready. Not a priority for Liberty.

Video: Invested to make a multi-screen, beautiful interface available. Churn rate on Horizon is lower. Provides replay TV back seven days on TV and mobile devices. Apps like YouTube and Netflix run on the device.

No home runs in content in Europe. They look for smaller incremental content investments.

Guiding to $1.5 billion of FCF in 2017; this is the trough. More vendor financing in 2017. They expect FCF will grow in 2018 and beyond.

They have a lot of flexibility to scale back new builds if returns do not materialize making it low risk.

In 1999 Warren Buffet wrote, “In Ajit, we have an underwriter equipped with the intelligence to properly rate most risks; the realism to forget about those he can’t evaluate; the courage to write huge policies when the premium is appropriate; and the discipline to reject even the smallest risk when the premium is inadequate. It is rare to find a person possessing any one of these talents. For one person to have them all is remarkable.”

It is interesting that these qualities parallel those required to be a successful investor.

A successful investor must:

properly assess the future prospects of a business;

quickly pass on those businesses he cannot understand;

have the courage to make a large bet when the odds are in his favor;

not invest if the margin of safety is too small.

You can infer from Buffett’s comments that finding (or becoming) an investor with these traits is difficult.

Weschler listed three broad filters he uses for investing in healthcare stocks.

Does the provider deliver better quality of care than someone could get anywhere else?

Does the company deliver a net savings to the healthcare system?

Do you get a high-return on capital, growth and a shareholder friendly management? Presumably, Weschler looks for these same characteristics in other industries.

Weschler began studying the dialysis industry right out of college. Therefore he knows the industry well. The lesson here is to look for insights by studying an industry deeply over a sustained period of time. This echoes lessons from Warren Buffett.

Finally, Weschler is long-term oriented. He has no idea how DaVita will do in the short term (two years out) but he is confident that in five years it will be a more valuable franchise.

The takeaway: a value-oriented rational framework applied consistently over time will deliver (very) satisfactory results.

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